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Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by Blaise Pascal (French Philosopher, Scientist)

Inspirational Quotations by Blaise Pascal (French Philosopher, Scientist)

Blaise Pascal (1623–62) was a French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. Later a Jansenist scholar, he wrote two classics of French devotional thought, the Lettres Provinciales 1656–57,) directed against the casuistry of the Jesuits, and Pensées (1670,) a defense of Christianity.

Born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Pascal was the son of a venerated mathematician and a local bureaucrat. Early in life, Pascal proved that he was a prodigy by discovering Euclid’s first 23 propositions for himself at the age of 11. Pascal’s work contains his famous theorem on a hexagram inscribed in a conic.

While only 17, Pascal published an essay on mathematics that René Descartes refused to recognize as being the work of a teen. Pascal produced (1642–44) a calculating device to aid his father in his local administration; Gottfried Leibniz later simplified it.

With Pierre de Fermat, Pascal laid the foundations of the mathematical system of probability. He also contributed to calculus and hydrodynamics, devising Pascal’s Law in 1647. He developed the hydraulic press, the barometer, and the syringe and published his work on vacuums in 1647. The SI unit of pressure is named after him.

In 1646, Pascal converted to Jansenism, and religion became progressively dominant in his life, culminating in him joining the Jansenist retreat at Port-royal Des Champs in 1655. There, Pascal disseminated a religious doctrine that clarified the experience of God through the heart instead of through reason. The establishment of his belief of intuitionism had a bearing on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and on the Existentialists.

Pascal’s notes for a casebook of Christian truths were found after his death and published as the Pensées in 1669. They contain intense perceptions of religious truths coupled with a suspicion of rationalist thought and theology.

Notable biographies of Pascal include Jean Mesnard’s Pascal: His Life and Works (1951; trans. 1952) and Ernest Mortimer’s Blaise Pascal: The Life and Work of a Realist (1959.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Blaise Pascal

Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Happiness

Kind words produce their own image in men’s souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Kindness

The incredulous are of all men the most credulous; they believe the miracles of Vespasian, in order not to believe those of Moses.
—Blaise Pascal

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Religion

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Thought, Greatness, Thinking, Thoughts, Reason

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for awhile each day in our rooms.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Meditation, Prayer

Those we call the ancients were really new in everything.
—Blaise Pascal

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Audiences

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Writers, Authors & Writing

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Kindness, Words

There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerlessness, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Rest

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Authors & Writing, Brevity

There are three means of believing, by inspiration, by reason, and by custom.—Christianity, which is the only rational system, admits none for its sons who do not believe according to inspiration.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Belief

Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, sutler, cook, street porter, vapor and wish to have their admirers; and philosophers even wish the same. Those who write against it wish to have the glory of having written well; and those who read it wish to have the glory of having read well; and I, who write this, have perhaps this desire; and perhaps those who will read this.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Vanity

Brave deeds are most estimable when hidden.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Deeds, Good Deeds, Goodness, Posterity

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Time Management, Virtue, Value of Time, Integrity, Truth

The multitude which is not brought to act as unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Man, Unity

Don’t try to add more years to your life. Better add more life to your years.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Immortality

Let any man examine his thoughts, and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Present

There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Lying

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Feelings

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Feelings, Love

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Thoughts, Thinking, Thought

Jesus Christ is a God to whom we can approach without pride, and before whom we may abase ourselves without despair.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Christianity, Religion

The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion; the unity which does not depend upon the multitude, is tyranny.
—Blaise Pascal

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Light, Faith

However vast a man’s spiritual resources, he is capable of but one great passion.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Passion

Those who make antitheses by forcing the sense are like men who make false windows for the sake of symmetry. Their rule is not to speak justly, but to make accurate figures.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Style

The war existing between the senses and reason.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Conflict

We are so presumptuous that we wish to be known to all the world, even to those who come after us; and we are so vain that the esteem of five or six persons immediately around us is enough to amuse and satisfy us.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Vanity

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